Caryl Schlicher has decades of experience in the writing and teaching fields. In high school, she won numerous awards
for her speech writing and persuasive speaking. She then earned a B.A. in the teaching of speech with an
English minor from the University of Illinois. She taught English, speech, radio-television, and drama in a K-12
private school and then a public high school before moving on to work for Caterpillar as a computer programmer and
systems analyst.

She later worked as a freelance writer for the Peoria Journal Star, Peoria Times-Observer, and Caterpillar, and wrote for
and edited various newsletters. She won a fellowship that paid for a master's degree in counseling at Bradley University
and completed that degree in 2005 with a 4.0 GPA. Her teaching experience also includes teaching and tutoring at Illinois
Central College, home schooling her own children, teaching Sunday school, and teaching in a home school co-op that she
co-founded. In addition to her work at A Bridge To Excellence, she continues to tutor math and writing at ICC in her spare
time. Her students routinely do well, and one scored a perfect 800 on the SAT Writing Test.

She's a devoted follower of Jesus Christ and provides need-based scholarships for tutoring/mentoring for needy children.
She respects and works with individuals of all religions and backgrounds. She's the author of a teaching guide called
Simple Gifts, and believes that the parents are always a child's most important teachers.